Research Notes, Jan 25th

Some research notes so far, as of January 25^th:

The Documentation and Research Training Institute (DRTC) is one of the premier library and information science training institutions in the country. I paid a visit to DRTC on Friday, January 18^th, as I interviewed Dr. A.R.D. Prasad, one of the more well-respected voices in the Indian library community. He is the first person I have interviewed in relation to the Indian National Knowledge Commission’s working group on libraries.

It took nearly an hour and a half to get to the institute from my uncle’s house in Bangalore – DRTC is located in the Indian Statistical Institute (apparently for no logical reason and without “significance”…yuk, yuk) on the southwestern outskirts of the city, near the city limits and adjacent to Bangalore University. It is located on a nice and quiet campus, reminiscent of a Bangalore that existed about twenty years ago. The air was clean, the campus was wooded, and monkeys even roamed some of the interior corridors of the buildings! I was surprised to see monkeys running around here, as they are fairly scarce these days within the Bangalore city limits.

Meeting A.R.D Prasad seems to be a key encounter. He appears to be one of the more dynamic people in the Indian library community and we seem to have a lot of views in common regarding libraries, technology, and issues related to India’s development (and the dangers of hyper-consumerism currently affecting the country). Having him as someone to talk to and consult with will be good. We had a frank discussion about a lot of topics, and it appears that the state of public libraries in India is fairly poor (not a complete surprise), and levels of technology remain fairly low. Prasad is an advocate for transforming Indian libraries into “community information centres,” but how wide and deep this sentiment is within the larger Indian library community remains to be seen. He suggested some other people to speak with, including the Karnataka Public Library Director, Dr. Rajendra. It seems that the Karnataka public library system is one of the better ones in the country. What that means remains to be seen…..

I spent parts of Monday, January 21^st and Tuesday, January 22^nd at a conference focused on the conservation of India’s scientific heritage. A contact of mine, Christina Birdie, is the librarian at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. She was one of the organizers of this conference, as it brought together a group of librarians, archivists, and scientists for a discussion about Indian scientific and cultural heritage preservation. While not a topic of great interest for me, it provided a good opportunity to meet some key people in the Indian library community. The conference brought about a surprisingly decent number of contacts. I met some prominent LIS people from Chennai, and consequently my time in Chennai appears to be fixed up, with an invitation to speak to a library science class at the University of Madras and a public lecture for the Madras Library Association. I also made a key contact whom I will meet when I visit Delhi in the first part of February.

I am cautiously optimistic, but it seems that I am in the process of developing a nice group of dedicated and dynamic Indian library professionals for potential collaborative opportunities. A bulk of my contacts are lined up in Delhi and Kolkata. I am flying out of Bangalore for Delhi on Sunday, Feb 3, and have booked a room for several days at a guesthouse in south Delhi. Some time around Feb 16 I am planning to travel to Kolkata. Then after a week it’s on to Chennai, then hopefully some R&R in Pondicherry, the former French colony on the beach about a three hour drive from Chennai.

A contact at the Bangalore conference suggested I attend a library advocacy conference in Delhi taking place on March 13 and 14 at the Max Mueller Bhavan (part of the Goethe Institute). After taking a look at the conference website, it seemed to be a great fit for my research interests and one of those things that I need to do. However, a slight problem - my flight leaves Mumbai on March 10^th. So, I spent part of Friday on the phone with Continental Airlines changing my flight to leave instead from Delhi on Saturday, March 15^th. The extra fee for changing the ticket was worth the opportunity to make more potential research contacts and have an audience for some of my research ideas.

The state of public libraries in India seems to be quite poor, as I have anecdotally known and now have a better sense of. How fruitful a focus on these institutions will be for long-term research projects remains to be seen. Perhaps re-framing the issue more broadly in terms of community information systems/programs might be more fruitful, as the concept of an Indian public library remains underdeveloped.

The talk with Dr. Rajendra, the Karnataka public library director, was useful. At least based upon what he has told me about the Karnataka public library system, it looks like a good candidate for a future case study. I am particularly excited about his discussion of turning libraries into village knowledge centres. It seems that a good area to focus on would be to pursue library developments at the village and gram panchayat levels. He admits that the level of technology in Indian public libraries remains low, but he has applied for money from the national government to turn libraries in Karnataka into technology centres and may also receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Next week I will be taken on visits by Karnataka public library officers to both Bangalore city libraries and rural libraries close to the city. Needless to say, I am interested in seeing what transpires. Stay tuned….

Bangalore

I’ve just completed 2 weeks in-country now, and am starting to become acclimated to the chaos of India. I think I’ve also finally adjusted to the time change (they say it takes 1 day per hour of time difference – with a 13.5 hour difference between here and California, 2 weeks seems about right). The urban experience in India is intense, but Bangalore is certainly milder than places like Mumbai. When I landed in Bangalore on Wednesday, January 16^th, I actually felt comforted hearing rickshaw drivers and other assorted taxi fellows speaking Kannada, my family’s mother tongue.

While my knowledge of Kannada is fairly basic (I understand most casual conversation and speak hesitatingly with an intermittently appearing American accent), it nonetheless felt nice to hear a familiar language being spoken. Upon landing in Bangalore Airport, I went to the pre-paid taxi stand and bought a fare to go to my uncle’s house. I was given a fancy computer printout, and proceeded to go outside into the embrace of a jumbled queue. As I joined this hodgepodge assemblage of people, a fellow in a white jacket took my ticket without any introduction, and all I could do was follow him. I couldn’t tell whether or not I was being cheated – he just told me to wait while he brought the taxi. While he did eventually bring the taxi after about 10 minutes, it reminded me that things work in their own way in India. Had I been a foreign traveler first arriving in Bangalore, I would be completely confused about the goings-on. Needless to say, certain things in India need more polish, especially in the so-called information technology “capital” of the country.

India is what it is. I have to keep reminding myself about that. The inordinate amount of pollution at all levels (air, water, garbage, noise, etc.), the chaos of its streets, the unpredictability of its logistics, the type of grinding poverty that’s hard to find any place else – all of that is there. Its live and let live attitude, tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, endless adaptability and flexibility, joie de vivre – all of that is there as well. At some point, you just have to accept it and move on. India is what it is. Kind of like life. If you accept India as she is, she will take care of you. I believe that. Just don’t ask me why.

However, accepting these facts as the natural order of things in India is not the answer either. Can’t we demand and want better for India? This question can seem rather patronizing from someone coming to India as a sympathetic researcher – I understand this. The IT revolution has brought India more fully into the grasp of global capitalism, with a burgeoning middle class armed with increasing wealth and purchasing power. A certain dynamism also exists in the country, which gives a sense that India is on the up and up. Despite the increasing prosperity of segments of the country, however, public sector and governance issues still have a long way to go. Rural development, better public institutions, and mass education (potentially in the form of enhanced and greatly improved libraries) will go a long way, longer than any IT and capitalist revolution, in solving some of India’s most vexing challenges. In no way, however, am I suggesting or advocating the type of sterile, trite and uninspiring visions of “development” that the West hoists upon the so-called “developing” world. Indigenous and creative solutions to India’s challenges exist, and many committed people in India are working in this spirit. Whatever I may be able to do with my research, it will hopefully be in line with this framework of indigenous creativity and renewal.

Arrival in Mumbai

My mother and I arrived in Mumbai the night of Thursday, January 10th. This was the first time I had flown on a direct flight from the U.S. to India, traveling on a Continental Airlines plane which took us from Newark, NJ non-stop to Mumbai. Despite the nearly 14 hours of travel on this flight (combined with the four and a half hours flying from San Diego), I didn’t feel too tired upon arrival. Though I normally never sleep on flights, I was somehow able to grab a few hours of sleep, saving me from my usual somnambulant state upon entry into India.

The stale, musty odor of Mumbai’s Chattrapati Shivaji International Airport is pungent and unmistakable. The sweat of an entire subcontinent seems to greet you once you leave the confines of the jet walkway. A few small improvements are evident at the airport, including new bright, blue-trimmed signage (replacing the grim yellow-trimmed signs of the last few decades). In addition, a slew of construction activity gives one the impression that the airport is undergoing some major improvements.

The first few days of the trip were spent at a relative’s flat in the Juhu Beach area of Mumbai. This area appears to be one of the fairly well-to-do enclaves in the city, as the flat we stayed in is located less than 100 metres from Juhu Beach. The couple of days we spent here in this quiet neighbourhood served as a nice and gradual entry into the hectic and noisy urban life of India. Apparently the beach has been cleaned up considerably over the last year, at least according to my relative. I thought the beach was fairly pleasant for Indian standards, and Friday night we all took a nice walk along the beach, as I caught my first sunset over the Arabian Sea. This walk reminded me that despite all the cultural, physical and sociological differences between places like the U.S./Canada and India (and there are several), the unifying power of nature is still more powerful. Thus, a walk along the Arabian Sea on Juhu Beach is not so different from a walk near the Pacific Ocean in San Diego!

The intensity of urban India really came to life for me once again during a cross-town trip to a cousin’s flat in the northern part of Mumbai. We took a ride in a non-AC taxi to get there, which basically means that the windows are down during the whole trip and you get to inhale a continuous and full dosage of the toxic brew that is Mumbai’s air. I don’t think it’s possible for me to describe how terrible the air quality is in a place like Mumbai (or for that matter, in any of India’s large metropolitan cities). Diesel fumes from buses, auto rickshaws, scooters, cars, motorbikes, and ambient dust create this unfathomable haze that envelops the surface level air, as well as the distant horizon. Seeing the air pollution of Mumbai reminded me of one of the worst air quality days in the interior of Los Angeles during a hot mid-July day, but multiplied by at least 3 to 4 times. Needless to say, after this journey my lungs burned and I felt like I had smoked 2 –3 packs of cigarettes in that 40 minute journey. Now I know why people pay a premium for AC taxis!

My research will begin in earnest once I reach Bangalore after Wednesday, Jan 16. While I have yet to reflect deeply on the potential roles of revitalized public libraries in India for enhanced mass education and information access, I am again already reminded of the challenges I face. I just need to look at the state of other public infrastructure projects in the country to see how the idea of the public good and a social contract is so different in India than in many parts of the West. For instance, most of the major cities in India lack decent footpaths or sidewalks, and basic infrastructure like roads are crumbling under the intense pressure of a continuously burgeoning number of vehicles that enter the roads each day. Walking along a major intersection in India is taking your life into your own hands. Crossing a street becomes an existential adventure of negotiating the speed of oncoming vehicles and taking a leap of faith. Who needs to play video games when one can participate in a real life game of Frogger!

More to come later….